In very large organizations such as large corporations or governmental entities, management of infrastructure components may become overwhelming. For example, these components may comprise computers, networks, types of connectivity, specific types of technologies, versions of components, telecommunication devices, or any other components that typically has evolutionary characteristics or interoperability requirements.
When an organization or enterprise undergoes a large scale migration, efficiently administering or coordinating the migration activity may become unachievable or, at least, a great challenge. The migration may include such notions as physical relocation of large numbers of people and equipment to different locations, functional reorganization of personnel, or general upgrade in a variety of technologies, or the like. If the migration is very large in scope, scheduling and costs may become prohibitive, or at least demand closely monitored controls.
If a large scale migration includes physical reorganization of offices and personnel simultaneously with general technology upgrades such as computers, phone systems, equipment, local area networks (LANs), the challenge is compounded. Tracking physical specifications such as office wiring and/or connectivity locations and correlating these physical parameters to personnel requirements and their associated equipment such as computer types, versions of software or types of connectors to networks, becomes a very complicated matter.
Typically, a migration group or other designated group, such as an information technology (IT) group, may be charged with overall management and facilitation of a migration. However, developing the parameters of the migration and then organizing the parameters associated with all the components, people, and physical space typically is not well defined in a manner suited for the task. The amount of data that may be required to describe, anticipate and control a migration for the long term may even exceed the realistic limits of common databases, in particular, from a database performance point of view.